Articles (a, an, the)

Articles (a, an, the)

Grammar

This exercise focuses on articles which tend to be difficult to grasp for beginners. The definite article 'the' and the indefinite article in the form of 'a' or 'an' define nouns. In this exercise, a student is presented with various words, phrases and sentences. The task is to choose the correct article in each given example.

• Level 1 - students are presented with simple countable nouns and have to choose between the article 'a' or 'an'. The article 'an' should be used when a noun starts with a vowel. The article 'a' should be chosen when the given noun starts with a consonant e.g. an apple, a table
• Level 2 - students are presented with phrases and have to choose between the article 'a' or 'an'. The phrases are a bit more difficult because some sounds are pronounced as consonants but spelt as vowels or the other way around. This, in turn, changes the article students should choose if those sounds are the first sounds of given words. E.g. the first letter in the word 'university' is pronounced as 'j' sound. The correct article is 'a' because in this case, the pronounced sound is not a vowel but a consonant. If students are struggling with the correct pronunciation of the given words, we recommend doing exercise 101 - Articles Level 2 first. Students will be able to listen to the correct pronunciation of the phrases there.